


Mind Set on Mindset

by calrissian18



Series: Teen Wolf Coda [7]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Based on the Events of 3x23, Coda, Episode Related, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-18
Updated: 2014-03-18
Packaged: 2018-01-16 04:51:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1332583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calrissian18/pseuds/calrissian18
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His fingers tighten and he’s aiming the gun at the middle of Stiles’ forehead before he even realizes he’s raised his arm.</p><p>It would be a pretty shot if he took it.  Perfectly centered.</p><p> </p><p>3.23 Coda - because some people need hugs and I can share my Stiles (I guess).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mind Set on Mindset

It’s remarkable how numb he feels, opening the door to find Stiles standing on the other side of it with a gun barrel pointed at Chris’ chest.  It looks like a 9mm.  Chris tilts his head.  Glock.  At least the question’s answered of which Stiles this is.

Or it had been, until Stiles licks cracked lips, turns the gun around with deft hands – with hands that know the weight, feel and power of the weapon they’re holding – and presents it to him with trembling fingers. 

Not too numb to feel shock then.  “Stiles—”

He’s shaking all over, leaning a little like he wants to give in to the impulse to let the doorframe do half the work of propping him up.  Only he doesn’t want to give away how hurt he actually is.  “I figure you should—” he isn’t meeting Chris’ eyes and his voice has an odd wheezing quality to the breaths between words, “you should get a moment, a moment of some other feeling than loss, you know.  Even before—before—” he doesn’t say her name, shies away from it, “your wife died, too, so you deserve a new emotion.  You deserve to get something  _back_  rather than having another taken.”

The gun is shoved into his hand, Stiles’ doing most of the work to put it there.  He manhandles it around, closes Chris’ fingers over the grip, backs up a step and swallows.

“You want me to shoot you?”  The gun rattles in his hand as the penny drops.  His nostrils flare.

Stiles shakes his head.  Once.  Sharply.  “I want you to kill me,” he corrects.

Chris doesn’t stagger.  It feels like he does.  “After all she went through—all she—” he draws in a cutting gasp of air, like jagged shards of ice in his lungs, “it was all about keeping you alive.  She wouldn’t let me—wouldn’t… Went so far as to take the firing pin, she—” his voice cracks, breaks, and it’s beyond fixing.  He lets the sentence drop.  It feels like so recent a moment that he could reach out and touch it. 

Stiles jigs in place, kind of bouncing on the soles of his shoes as though gearing up towards something, to a motivational speech of some sort.  “Look at me,” he says coldly, holding out his arms after he finally gets his fingers to stop anxiously twisting together, “I’m on death’s doorstep anyway.  Isaac says I even smell like it.”  There’s something darker than just persuasion in his tone and Chris really isn’t so certain of which Stiles this is after all.

A tic flutters under one of Stiles’ eyes.  “Someone should get something out of it.  And maybe—maybe killing me, maybe that’s what kills  _it_ , too.”

There’s a yawning desperation there now, focused and not – seeking a finish, any finish, rather than a fitting ending.  Stiles wants to die.  Chris is just the delivery system.  The gun in his hand feels too heavy to hold onto, his arm dragging.   “I won’t let you use my  _grief_ ,” he spits the word, feels like he chews it first, “to fulfill some death wish.”

Stiles’ eyes glitter, the outcome he’d been so sure of slipping through his fingers too fast for him to grab onto.  He takes a step forward and it’s automatic the way Chris’ hand tightens on the grip.  Stiles still has an air of ‘unnatural’ about him.  His eyes are too sunken, under them too dark.  His skin isn’t just pale, it’s colorless, lifeless, like paper.  His hair looks brittle to the touch and his lips seem to be permanently cracked and Chris had noticed when Stiles had foisted the gun onto him that his nails were splitting.

He was dying, coming apart in slow motion.

“I killed her,” he says, licking perpetually dry lips.  “You know, however much you want to try to negate it, it couldn’t have happened without me.  I killed Allison.”  They both flinch as her name leaves his lips.  “I’m just asking you to take what’s owed to you.”  He swallows, steps close, and the word is a breathless laugh: “Life.”

For a second, Chris sees the  _pleasure_  on the nogitsune’s face as his daughter bled to death.  On this face.  This face that still doesn’t look quite human.  This face that is the source of all his pain, his anguish, this stabbing feeling of nothingness that’s slicing into his gut.  His fingers tighten and he’s aiming the gun at the middle of Stiles’ forehead before he even realizes he’s raised his arm.

It would be a pretty shot if he took it.  Perfectly centered.

He ejects the magazine and, one by one, he uses the pad of his thumb to slip the ammo out.  He lets the bullets he didn’t use, the bullets he won’t use, fall to the floor, leaving small divots in the wood where they strike down.

Stiles’ shoulders tighten as each one hits the ground, like it’s an opportunity missed.

Chris hands him back the empty glock and his throat feels like sandpaper.  His voice sounds like it’s scraped against it to get out.  “You didn’t kill my daughter,” he says, because that’s what it comes down to.  Stiles isn’t responsible.  He’s terrified and Chris can even somewhat understand the urge, to want it over rather than to have to try to figure out how to  _keep going_.

Stiles shakes his head, bites into his lip and little strips of flesh pull away with the action.  He steps all the way inside, closes the door behind him as though closing off the possibility of witnesses.  “Please,” he hisses softly, eyes round and dry and any calm he had unraveling, “just, please—”

Chris means to ease him into something that would look a lot less like the onset of a panic attack.  He means to clench his hand on Stiles’ shoulder, explain that Stiles isn’t responsible no matter how much he feels it, to send him home and make sure someone looks after him so he doesn’t do anything this idiotic again.  What he doesn’t mean to do is dig his fingers into Stiles’ t-shirt, push him back up against the door and all but collapse.  He heaves great, sobbing breaths into Stiles’ neck and shoulder.

He’s not crying but his breathing is mimicking it, shuddering through every inch of his body because he just  _can’t_  keep on.  He’s been riding the fumes of adrenaline and the numbness of his shock and now it’s all swept out of him, left him hollow and  _bare_  and with the stark, too sharp reality that he can walk down the hall and look into Allison’s bedroom knowing she’ll never make another alteration to it.

Stiles clearly expected this as much as Chris and he goes stiff, taut, almost like he suspects Chris is planning to bite him or try to snap his collarbone.  It’s obvious he thinks this position has to be the prelude to something so much worse.  But all Chris can do is try to suck in breath faster than it’s being dragged out of him by his bawling, unruly gasping.

Hands hesitantly pat his back, insensitive and unsure, before they flatten, smooth under his shoulder blades, hold onto him like they’re trying to impart comfort rather than weather a storm.

Chris snorts, even the horror of his situation isn’t enough to keep him from feeling like a fool for taking strength from a teenager who barely has any left.  He lifts himself off Stiles from where he’s mostly collapsed against him, huffs unkindly, “Get out of my house, Stiles.”

Stiles clenches his hands into fists at his sides, like he’s not sure what he’s meant to do with them now.  He squares his shoulders, thrusts out his chin.  His voice isn’t even half as sure as his actions.  “I know I’m not the—the _person_  for this but I’m not leaving you on your own.”

Chris sizes him up.  “You’re not staying here,” he decides.  “Your father will be going out of his mind worrying about you.”  He places his hands on the edges of the hall table, holds himself up like he’s taken a blow – because he has, and murmurs under his breath, “It’s what fathers do.”  He snatches up his keys, makes it look like that had been his intention all along, and says firmly, “I’ll drive you home.”

Stiles stares at him like he’s trying to see past the facade Chris is projecting.  “Only if you stay.”  His expression hardens at the clear ‘no’ in Chris’.  “I mean it.  I’m not leaving you alone, not like this.”  Chris shakes his head, rubs his brow, tries to figure out how he’s going to convince a damaged seventeen-year-old that he’s not damaged, too.  He’s starting to suspect Stiles wouldn’t buy it, no matter how convincing a show he managed to put on.

Stiles glances down at the key ring in Chris’ hand, then back up to his face.  “ _If_  you stay, until we hear something.  Until we know the next place it’s going to be.”

“And if that’s days?”  Chris is genuinely curious what Stiles’ plan is here.  If he even has one.

Stiles shrugs and he looks a little winded by it.  “Then it’s days,” he says simply.  “We’re civilized, you know,” and – for half a moment – there’s that wry, sarcastic Stiles behind the eyes and in the words, “we have a guest room and everything.”

There’s a part of Chris that wants to argue, but exhaustion like he’s never felt before is creeping over him and he just doesn’t have the energy.  “Fine.”

The drive is silent.  They both stare out windows.  Stiles doesn’t ask Chris to shoot him.  Chris doesn’t have to resist the temptation to make something  _else_ bleed.  He pulls up to the Stilinski house, wonders if he ever intended to keep his promise to stay when Stiles gets out.  He holds the door open, stares into the car until Chris unbuckles his seatbelt and steps out, too.

“Your dad?” Chris asks, squinting up at the roof, the sun peeking out over it, not really sure what he’s asking.

Stiles shrugs again.  “He’ll understand,” he says softly.

Chris supposes he would, supposes he could show up on any parent’s doorstep and they’d invite him inside.  His hands are empty, he’s only just now realizing how strange that is.  He hasn’t taken anything he owns, hasn’t planned this out at all, got out of a car because Stiles had frowned at him when he’d stayed in it.  It hasn’t even taken him twenty-four hours to completely lose his bearings.

Stiles leads him inside, leaves the door open and they’re both treating the place like they’re strangers in it.  Chris hadn’t even thought about that, about whether or not Stiles had been back on his own yet.  Stiles gestures to the couch in the living room.  “There’s tea, I think.  I could use some.  You?”

Chris nods, not sure what he’s just agreed to.  Had Allison been here?  He can’t remember.

It feels like he’s unsettling some film of her memory that’s potentially blanketing every surface and he can hear clanging in the kitchen and it’s just too much like a  _home_  he doesn’t belong to, a home he doesn’t have.

He pulls his own gun from the waistband of his jeans and stalks outside, circles the house, and pulls the trigger.  The bullet makes a whapping sound as it slaps into the bark of a tree in the Stilinski’s backyard.  He hits almost the same spot another three more times.  He keeps firing even as he’s lowering it to bring his arm back, hitting grass and dirt, lost in the deafening sound, the bleakness of silence left behind until he’s just pulling the trigger on an empty chamber.

He brings his arms up, tries to dig at his eyes with the heels of his palms, but a hand is flattening clumsily on his jaw and pulling his head around.  Stiles’ lips are dry and rough and Chris kisses him like it’s an answer.  He’s still holding the gun when he crosses his wrists over the small of Stiles’ back, pulls him close with that ‘x’ made of limbs since one hand is occupied.

Stiles stands on his tiptoes and Chris smoothes out the crags in his lips with the suck of his own mouth and the drag of his tongue.   Stiles’ arms wind around his neck, fingers awkwardly part Chris’ hair as they drag into it.  There’s so much  _more_  behind it than Chris would have thought Stiles capable of, compassion and care and  _want_  and remorse.  Stiles parts his lips and Chris slides his tongue in and Stiles sucks, his mouth familiar with all it should be doing through instinct rather than experience.

Stiles’ chest is sliding against his front, hips slotting together with Chris’ and he can feel the heat of Stiles’ cock pressing into his hip and he’s surprised to find that it doesn’t disrupt the mood between them, only enhances it.

The front door slams and Stiles’ mouth pulls away.  Otherwise, he doesn’t move, a distinct lack of fear about him.  Chris’ arms are still barricading him in and his hands are still wrapped around Chris’ neck.  His eyes are bright, wide.  “Did you have a moment?” he asks.

It takes Chris a second and then he remembers, what Stiles had showed up with on his doorstep, what misguided proposition he’d made.  He’d gotten what he wanted, in a way.  Chris swallows.  “It was fleeting,” he says hoarsely, “but yes.”

He takes a step back.  Chris lets him go.  Stiles shoves his hands in his pockets, either trying to make himself look smaller or hide his hard-on.  Maybe both.  He ducks his head slightly.  “For as long as I’m,” one shoulder pulls up, “you know,  _around_ ,” one side of his mouth lifts and tugs to the side, “I’m good for moments.”

Chris’ eyes search his face.  “You’re going to be around a long time, Stiles,” he says unquestionably and Stiles offers him a placating grin, disbelieving but too passive to say so, before running back up to the house.  Chris hears him calling out a greeting to the sheriff (who was undoubtedly drawn back by the gunfire) on the edges of his consciousness.  He stares down at the empty weapon and raises his lip, weighing it in his hand.  He’s got a garage stocked with bullets to keep it full.  “I’m gonna make sure of it.”

**Author's Note:**

> All the coolest people hang out [here](http://wellhalesbells.tumblr.com/). ~~Not yet FDA approved.~~


End file.
